It was formerly (until 1946) known as the People's Commissariat for Justice (Russian: Народный комиссариат юстиции, Narodniy Komissariat Yustitsi'i) abbreviated as Наркомюст (Narkomiust or sometimes known in English as "Narkomyust").

The Ministry, at the All-Union (USSR-wide) level, was established in the 1936 Soviet Constitution, and was in turn based upon the People's Commissariat for Justice of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) formed in 1917, with the latter becoming subordinate, along with the other republican Narkomyusts, to the Union-level People's Commissariat of Justice of the USSR.

According to a decree from 1972, the Ministry of Justice prepared proposals for the codification of law; it carried out methodological management of legal work in the national economy.

The Ministry's main goal was to strengthen socialist legality and the rule of law within Soviet judicial institutions.

The organisational leadership, and the courts, had full control over the republican, autonomous, and provincial levels of government and the party.

[2] On 1 February 1923 the All-Union People's Commissariat for Justice was dissolved, and its responsibilities, duties, and functions were given to the Procurator General.

The Ministry's main task was to direct and supervise judicially organs, both at the Union and All-Union level, according to a decree from 1975.

[5] The main task of the Ministry was to develop proposals on issues linked to the judicial system; the election of judges, elect the judiciary, organising the judiciary, studying and summarising of the jurisprudence in coordination with the Supreme Court, and to organise work for the maintenance of judicial statistics.

What we're up against here is a deep prejudice, imbibed with their mother's milk... a mistaken belief that people should be tried in accordance not with the Party's political guidelines but with considerations of "higher justice.

Khrushchev tried to make the Soviet court more independent from central authority by enforcing the 1936 constitution on the country's judicial branch.